Why to use Docklet

As a "Workspace Cloud", Docklet has several advantages.

First, what Docklet provides is a virtual workspace for developers, but no only an Iaas or PaaS solution, therefore more friendly to deveopers.

Second, the Docklet vcluster provides a high effient and simple method of sharing physical resources, therefore more friendly to administrators.

The detailed advantages and features of Docklet include:

Wide applicability

Docklet is not designed for large data center, but for small or mini data center. By mini data center, we mean a cluster with not more than 100 physical hosts, all connected by high speed network, each host with relatively high performance. This is the common configuration of most medium or small enterprises and institutes. Therefore, Docklet has a wide applicability.

Easily Sharing Cluster among Frameworks

Traditionally clusters are often monopolized, serving only one kind of application framework, e.g., MPI or Spark. It is usually difficult to share the physcal cluster among different frameworks.

Mesos and Yarn each try to provide a mechanism of sharing clusters. However, they require extra work of customization for each supported framework, which seems not flexible and a bit difficult.

Docklet provides a flexible and easy solution. By virtualizing the physical clusters, almost all computing frameworks can run in the LXC vcluster seamlessly without any customization and modification.

Dynamically and Elastically Configure Resources

Docklet vcluster supports elastically configuring resources. Users can add a fully functional LXC node to existing vcluster instantly by just a click. This feature is useful for the application frameworks that support elastic resource management, e.g., Spark.

Docklet can monitor the activity of users, smartly finding those not at work, then adjust their resource quota dynamically. This can bring about good usage experience for online active users, together with reasonable resource utilization.

Consuming Very Few Network Resources

Docklet utilizes the technology of software defined networks. The inner vclusters will use private Internet address space, e.g., 172.16/16, not consuming public Internet addresses. The administrator only need to configure one public Internet address/URL for Docklet portal. Users use just a modern browser to access their private vcluster located behind the enterprise's firewall through the portal's public URL. This feature is very attractive for those enterprises without so many public Internet addresses.

User Friendly

Docklet is mainly targeted for enterprises's staff developers. It is domain oriented, therefore can be setup to meet the enterprise's requirements deliberately. The public base image has most often used software. Users can directly start their programming and analyzing job with just a browser, without the heavy burden of installing and configuring the physical clusters, installation of software frameworks, management of images, etc. Therefore, it is very friently to end users, which is especially important for those non-export users.

Ideal Environment for Application Development and Testing

The easy usage of Docklet means it can be an ideal environment for application development and testing. For example, users can program and debug a big data analyzing software with a small data set (possibly Gigabye scale). If success, then deploy it to production system with true big data. In fact, for most data analyzing and mining jobs, their data set is usually not so large, which means they can directly run and output the final results in Docklet.

Docklet is also a good platform for exercising programming skills and studying programming languages. No need to install kinds of tools, just a browser is OK.

Easy to Customize and Extend

The enterprise's Docklet administrator is free to make specific public base images. The users can also install new software not in the base image. What is more, the users can save their Workspace as image and then share with others, which is very convenient for users of one group.

Supporting Multiple Users

Docklet vcluster naturally supports multiple users. Each user has their own private vcluster independenlty. Each vcluster can run different frameworks such as MPI and Spark without worry about interference. Therefore, it can satisfy the different requirements of different users.

Advantages of LXC

Docklet uses LXC technology. Therefore, it has the advantages of LXC and LXC-based solutions like Docker, including instant booting container in seconds; high utilization of resources, running thousands of containers in one physical host; high performance of applications; consuming less resources; fast delivery; simple management, etc.